


A Thread Between

by p1013



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aurors, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Love Potion/Spell, M/M, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22637749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/p1013/pseuds/p1013
Summary: Draco's face sneers down at him, imperious and vile, and Harry wants him so badly, he thinks he's going to be sick.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 302





	A Thread Between

Ministry events haven't grown on Harry in the handful of years since the end of the war. They've become less boisterous, less frantically joyous, than those early days, but they're still overly crowded with wizards and witches too closely acquainted with their own deaths. Smiles are too bright, laughter ringing forced and painful through the room, and everyone desperate to reaffirm that they're still alive when so many others aren't.

It's been a rough couple of months. Ever since the Incident—he can't bring himself to think of it in any more detail than that, not while he's in public, not while he's nowhere near drunk enough to feel that vulnerable—Harry's been… He doesn't really know what he's been, if he's to be honest. There's a numbness, a lack of emotion that he hasn't felt since the days immediately following Voldemort's death. He eats. He goes to work. He spends time with his friends. As far as anyone can tell, things have continued in exactly the same way as they had before. But for Harry, it's like a grey gauze has covered every aspect of his life, draining away the light and the color until all that's left is a soft fog that never clears. He blames it on the after-effects of what happened, but with every day it lingers, he worries that it may never dissipate, that this may be his new normal. Grey and distant and dark.

He'd arrived at the ball with Ron and Hermione hours earlier. They'd shuffled him out of Grimmauld Place, teasing and encouraging him to "go have a bit of fun, mate," and "get out of the house for a bit, really," as they all piled into the Floo. They'd walked around together, shoving their way to the bar before Ron bowed low over Hermione's hand, blue eyes twinkling, and asked her to dance. Harry had watched them from the sidelines, smiling softly as they spun around the room together, lost in each other completely, before they disappeared in the ebb and flow of the dance floor. After having too many sweaty hands thrust into his, grip always too tight as another faceless stranger thanked him again and again for whatever great thing he'd done this time—a small group of children, lost too close to a bog and the will-o-wisps that lived there—he'd refilled his glass with a generous pour of Firewhiskey, and had done his best to blend in with the curtains.

It's been working fairly well, so far. His dress robes, somewhat shabby and out of fashion, though no one is willing to tell him otherwise, except for—his throat closes, grief sudden and shocking as if he's fallen into cold water. Eyes closing as he fights for composure, he breathes slowly, pushing it down, forcing it back into a tight ball in his chest, drawing the mist tighter around himself until it's all muted and grey and safe again.

Anyway, he doesn't look that much different from the drapes, and he's been nursing his drink for awhile, enjoying the cold press of the glass against his fingers while the room has grown warm and humid around him. He sips at it carefully, the smokey taste lingering on his tongue as he pulls the glass away, eyes scanning the room for his friends so he can say his goodbyes and flee this awful party.

He thinks he sees a flash of red, and as his vision focuses, he freezes. Malfoy is across the room, and it's like someone has started to spin a Time Turner, everything stilling for a moment before time ricochets backwards. The crowd falls silent. Movement stills, stops. All he can see is silver-blond hair, too-sharp features pulled into a taut, polite mask, stiff shoulders, clenched hands. Harry remembers the feel of them on his skin, fingertip to fingertip. His heart beats.

The moment shatters.

Harry can't hear Draco curse, but he sees the word on his lips before the man turns and runs.

He pretends the pain cutting through him like _sectumsempra_ is just the burn of too much liquor as he downs the rest of his drink in one desperate swallow.

* * *

They approach the woman's home—Malfoy sneering about whatever has his dander up this morning, Harry doing his best to ignore it—and step over her wards with _Protego_ spells casually—carelessly—cast, and it all goes to hell. There's a flash of light. Someone screams his name, and Harry turns.

Grey eyes meet his, wide and full of fear. He takes a stumbling step forward, and then it overwhelms him. Shock is replaced by a sense of completion that's almost as terrifying. But then he's drawn closer, his eyes locked on those grey ones and the reflected emotion there, the undeniable pull that drags him like a compass to north.

* * *

Harry's still got the glass in his hand, though he's walking down a street he doesn't recognize, nowhere near the ball. Wordlessly, he transfigures it into a marble and tucks it into his pocket. With nothing to keep his hands busy, he leaves them in his pockets, wrapped into fists, and tries not to fold in on himself.

He wishes it was raining. He wishes he had the energy to Apparate home. He wishes he'd never gone to that small, unassuming cottage with Draco Malfoy.

Quietly cursing himself, he fiddles with the marble. It's been months, _months_ , since it all happened, and he still can't bear to be in the same room as the bastard. That brief glance is the first time Harry's seen Draco in weeks. They used to work together daily, and now, he can't even think about the git without wanting to break down and cry.

He pulls his robe tighter around his shoulders, finally feeling steady enough to Apparate home and lose himself in a bottle and sleep when someone calls his name. It washes over him like a gentle touch, and he closes his eyes against the wave of pleasure it leaves in its wake. He turns, his hand slipping from his collar to his pocket to grip the marble like a lifeline, and watches Draco Malfoy walk out from the shadows behind him.

* * *

"Abbott!" Scrimgeour bellows from his office.

Stumbling from her desk, Hannah rushes to the door, heart pounding. "Yes, sir?"

"Get me Potter and Malfoy. They've been gone for two hours now. A welfare check shouldn't take this long."

"Yes, sir."

Hannah walks to the Apparation point in the center of the Auror's Department in the Ministry, irritated that she's been tapped to drag Harry and Draco back after they skived off. She struggled to become an Auror, but she's damned good at her job and deserves more respect than this. She isn't here to be someone's glorified babysitter or errand girl.

Of course, all of that anger and irritation evaporates when she appears in Ms. Collin's yard and stares, disbelieving, at her colleagues.

Harry and Draco are kneeling on the ground, their foreheads touching, eyes closed. Their fingers rest gently against each other, and they're silent, breathing slowly. Hannah tries shaking them, casting _Finite Incantatem_ until her throat grows hoarse, nearly hexing them to try and get a response. It isn't until she yells Harry's name directly in his ear, so close that her breath ruffles his hair, that he seems to hear her. His head turns slowly, eyes glazed and dusty-green as they drift open. He doesn't seem to recognize her, turns back to Draco like a lodestone.

St. Mungo's welcomes the pair with open, frantic arms, mediwizards and nurses rushing around them as Draco and Harry shuffle down the hallway, dazed and with their hands locked together.

Hannah stands in the open doorway and tries to think of how she's going to explain this to her boss.

* * *

Draco's hair is slightly out of place, a few white strands falling across his forehead. He brushes them back impatiently, grey eyes fierce and focused, as he draws closer. He's not wearing his robes anymore, and his white dress shirt sets off the lean lines of his body, the narrow expanse of his waist. His long, slender legs eat up the space between them, his polished dress shoes snapping against the pavement in a foreboding staccato.

Harry doesn't think he could move, even if he wanted to. His feet are firmly attached to the piece of sidewalk beneath them. This one square foot of earth is the only thing keeping him standing as he fights to stay calm, to stay professional.

"Potter," Draco says again, slowing as he approaches.

Like two magnets, poles misaligned and shoving each other away, there's a wide, unbridgeable gap between them.

"Malfoy."

"I saw you."

Harry doesn't look at the slow movement of Draco's throat as he swallows. "I know."

"Why did you…. Merlin, this shouldn't be this hard."

"No," he says, chest tightening, "it shouldn't be."

"Granger said she removed it. She said she knew what it was. Why is it…"

"I know."

Malfoy doesn't respond. Instead, he takes in Harry, his eyes roaming over Harry's face and body like a starving man placed before a feast. Frustration and desire bloom within Harry's chest, and as much as he wants Draco to stop looking at him like that, he doesn't want this moment to end.

"I shouldn't feel this way," Draco grits out. "This is wrong."

"I know."

"Will you stop saying that?" Draco takes a step forward, eyes wild. "Will you say something useful, for Merlin's sake?"

"What do you want me to say?" The words come out hot and despairing. "This isn't real. It's… it's a remnant, an echo. It'll fade, if we let it."

"Then let it, for fuck's sake!"

Harry laughs, and it feels like breaking glass in his throat. "I'm trying."

"Try harder."

* * *

Hermione wakes slowly. The lights in the hospital room are still off, no one at the door. She isn't sure what drew her from sleep, though the painful twinge of her neck would likely have done it if she'd stayed curled in the chair much longer.

Sheets rustle nearby, and then she hears it. Two voices, low and quiet.

"Are you okay?"

She's never heard Malfoy's voice pitched in that tone before. It makes her heart clench, and she closes her eyes quickly, not wanting to invade the moment any more than she already has.

"Yeah." Another rustle, then the metallic click of a side rail lowering. "As long as you're here, I'm okay."

"That's an awful thing to say. You'd be okay without me."

Silence. Breath.

"I don't know that I would be."

* * *

Grimmauld Place is home, but it's far from welcoming when Harry stumbles inside. The door slams behind him, and though the fire in the front room flares to life, the sudden heat is suffocating and the flames do little to penetrate the darkness. He rips out of his dress robes, the marble bouncing from his pocket to disappear under a piece of furniture, and throws them towards the coat rack. It dives for them, managing to catch them before they hit the ground, and angrily clatters its way back to the corner, shaking the wrinkles from the material with an impertinent jerk.

Harry can't bring himself to care. He's panting and on the edge of collapse. Desire and grief rip through him, building until he wants to scream. What kind of idiot puts a love spell on their property because they can't get up the courage to ask out the Muggle postman? What kind of idiot lets himself be trapped by it and tortured by it, and yet desperately wishes it would come back, if only for a moment?

He strides towards the Black Family Tree, the hanging flinching back as he stops before it.

Draco's face sneers down at him, imperious and vile, and Harry wants him so badly, he thinks he's going to be sick.

The portrait starts laughing when he takes the tapestry in his hands and yanks, the sound echoing through the room as the heavy fabric falls to the ground.

* * *

"I've figured it out," Hermione whispers to Ron from her side of the bed. "I can fix it."

Her hands shake between his, and he rubs them gently, hoping to calm her.

"That's great news, love," he says, pulling her hands to his mouth. He kisses her knuckles, and she smiles in the way that leaves him feeling full and warm. "I knew you'd figure it out."

Her smile fades as her eyes drop to their clasped hands. "I don't know, Ron. You've seen them, it just—"

"If either of them were in their right minds, they wouldn't want to be like this." He tries to keep his voice kind, rather than impatient, repeating words he's said many times since Harry'd been cursed. "You know that, 'Mione."

"I know." Her voice is fierce, but it trembles. "But what if it's real?"

"It's not, love." He kisses her hands again, lets his mouth travel up the familiar path of her skin until he finds her mouth with his. "Harry deserves to find something that is. He should be as lucky as us."

He tastes her smile, and their conversation dies, lost in the slow, steady beat of their hearts and the familiar motion of their bodies together.

* * *

Harry's head is pounding when he wakes up. He groans, rolls over, and falls to the floor in his living room. He presses his forehead to the cool wood grain, waiting for the pounding to subside before he realizes it's coming from his front door as well as his head. He rises to his feet, groaning, and walks to the door, body aching from a night spent on his sofa. The house doesn't like when he doesn't sleep in his bed, and it had made the cushions more and more worn throughout the night. They plump as Harry tosses a glare back towards the furniture, so when he wrenches the door open, he's not looking, and Ron comes tumbling through, hand raised to knock on the door and smacking Harry in the face instead.

"Bloody hell," Harry groans, pressing a hand to his cheek. "If you wanted to punch me, you could've at least made an effort."

"Sorry," Ron stammers. "It's just… It's Malfoy, mate. He's resigned."

* * *

The unbinding spell is deceptively simple. He and Harry are standing in the middle of a salt circle, surrounded by candles of varying colors and heights. Draco knows that the grain size of the salt and the distance of the candles from the ring and their various heights are all part of a wildly complicated bit of Arithmancy, but all he can see is the reflected light in Harry's bottle-green eyes.

He doesn't want to look away, though he isn't sure if it's the spell or if it's just the indefinable draw that Potter has always had on him. Their hands are linked, and he wonders how he'll be able to retain the memory of this touch, the gentle clasp of fingertip to fingertip. When Hermione starts speaking, Latin tripping from her too-clever tongue, he feels frantic, desperate.

He doesn't want to give this up. He doesn't want to lose this feeling. It's overwhelming and wild and breathtaking, and he can't let it go, he can't, how will he ever find anything like this ever again—

And then it's gone.

Harry—Potter now, again—takes a step back.

Their hands fall apart.

* * *

The gates of Malfoy Manor are closed, and even though Harry shakes them until his hands sting and shouts until his voice fades to almost nothing, there's no response from the house. The lights stay off, the windows dark, and though rain clouds, heavy and ominous, roll in with sunset, he doesn't move.

"Draco!" The name wrenches itself from his throat, from his chest. "You fucking coward!"

The rain starts, and Harry wonders why it tastes like salt on his lips.

* * *

Scrimgeour lifts his eyes from the paper in front of him, eyebrows raised.

"Resignation," he says carefully. "You're sure?"

"Yes, sir." 

Malfoy's eyes are locked on the wall behind Scrimgeour. He knows there's nothing on the wall other than a handful of commendations and an ugly portrait of the first Auror, and he wonders why one of his best people is throwing their career away when Malfoy can't even meet his eyes.

"I think not," he says, crumpling the paper up in his hands. "Leave of absence might do you some good, but if you think I'm going to let you quit, you're a bigger idiot than you look."

Steely grey eyes snap to his, finally.

 _Thank Merlin_ , he thinks. _There's the fight again._

* * *

Harry falls backwards into a large puddle when the gates swing open behind him. He looks up, blinking at the rain as it pools on his glasses, and makes out a blurred but familiar figure standing over him.

"What are you doing here?"

Harry rolls onto his front, his hands sinking into mud when he pushes himself to his feet. "Dra—Malfoy, I—"

"Why are you here?"

He wants to reach for him. He wants to draw that lean, lithe body against his, to tangle his dirty hands in that bright hair and leave a stain behind. Instead, he breathes slowly, carefully. Fights to stay calm when everything he wants is standing, implacable and drenched through, only a few feet away.

"I'd like to take you to dinner."

* * *

Hannah immediately owls Hermione when she sees Draco and Harry walking down Diagon Alley, fingers brushing and shoulders bumping together with each step.

Ron wants to call St. Mungo's and bring them in again.

"It must not have worked," he shouts at Hermione. "You'll have to do it again."

"It worked, Ron. Or are you saying I don't know what I'm doing?"

"No, Hermione, that's not what I'm saying. I'm _saying_ —"

After she convinces him not to be a prat about it, all three of them hurry to the Leaky Cauldron, trailing after the two men as they eat dinner, then walk through the shops, idly picking up items and setting them down, seemingly finding excuses to let their fingers brush, to stand too close together. Harry flicks a bit of lint from Draco's shoulder, then trails his hand to the small of his back. It stays there as they continue walking through the shop, Draco pointing to books that Hermione can't make out the titles of.

Hannah gives up after an hour. It takes Ron two, and only because he gets an urgent message from Scrimgeour about his people skiving off in the middle of the day again. He kisses the top of her head before he Disapparates, and the warmth of it moves through her like a banked fire.

Standing around the corner from the pair, she watches as Draco and Harry still. The crowd parts around them like a river around boulders, brushing by as they stand, undisturbed and unmoving. Two individuals so close together, they seem like one. Harry takes Draco's hands in his, drags his thumbs over Draco's knuckles as he speaks quietly. There's a shift, and Draco's shoulders soften, his body going loose and lax as he drifts closer, pushed by an invisible current.

They don't kiss. They don't touch, no more than fingertips together. But something swells in her chest as she watches, and Hermione smiles before stepping back into the crowd.

* * *

It's dark, the curtains of the bed pulled shut so no light seeps in. Harry reaches out, suddenly frantic, only to find the comforting warmth of a lean body next to his.

"Are you okay?" Draco asks, his voice roughened by sleep.

"Yeah," Harry says, rolling onto his side and pulling Draco closer. He buries his nose in Draco's hair, breathes him in, and feels something hard and cold like glass ease in his chest. "As long as you're here."

**Author's Note:**

> I've been bit by the Drarry bug. There's more coming, but this one had to get out before I burst.


End file.
